Dark Horses and Smoke-Filled Rooms.

• Author: PRICE, SEAN
• Position: Brief Article

The 1920 Republican convention was many things, but it wasn't dull

If this summer's made-for-TV Bush and Gore coronations give you an itchy channel-surfing finger, imagine a convention with actual suspense. That's how they used to be. Old-time conventions were more exciting than those of today, whose nominees have already been chosen in the primaries. But were they better?

When the Republicans gathered in Chicago's Coliseum on June 8, 1920, no one knew whom the party would pick to run for President. Five days and 10 ballots later, delegates had nominated an Ohio Senator and former newspaper editor named Warren G. Harding. And a new phrase had entered the political language to describe the locale of the secret, behind-the-scenes dickering by the party leaders who chose Harding: the "smoke-filled room."

As the election year began, the Republicans smelled victory. Americans were tired of worrying about the world, and they were tired of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson. World War I was over, and a Republican Congress had blocked Wilson's attempt to take the U.S. into the League of Nations, an international peacekeeping organization.

But whom would the GOP nominate to snatch the White House from Wilson's party? General Leonard Wood of New York was one possibility; he had been the commander of President Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders regiment in the Spanish-American War. Conservative Illinois Governor Frank Lowden and progressive Senator Hiram Johnson of California also had many backers.

Harding was among the less prominent candidates, known as dark horses. Party bosses liked him because he was easily manipulated. But at first he was reluctant to run. Playing poker and drinking with his friends interested him more than weighty policy matters. "I do not possess the elements of leadership or the widespread acquaintances which are essential," he had written in 1919. But Harry Daugherty, his campaign manager, assured him that presidential greatness was "largely an illusion of the people."

In February 1920, Daugherty told a New York Times reporter how his candidate might win the party's nod:

I don't expect Senator Harding to be nominated on the first, second, or third ballot, but ... about eleven minutes after 2 o'clock on Friday morning at the convention, when 15 or 20 men, somewhat weary, are sitting around a table, some one of them will say: "Who will we nominate?" At that decisive time the friends of Senator Harding can suggest him and can...